Those Mushroom-Onion Thingies. (Oh, and bread.)

[Hamel]

Introduction: Almost the entire time I've been playing H&H, I've tried and succeeded at keep my stats balanced. I did this because I felt that stats other than just strength and constitution would be useful someday, and those stats would need testing. It turns out I was right! Yay! But, before the map reset, I managed to raise all of my stats up to rather high levels, so it's still a pain to raise any of them.

Now, for the entirety of this map, I have only been raising my dexterity. So it can catch up to my other stats and I can be balanced once again (I'll have to do the same with psyche, eventually). This was especially difficult, since the only dexterity food was chanterelles. You can imagine my sheer joy when they implemented pirozhkis. You can also imagine my dismay when I learned that pirozhkis give constitution FEP. Which means I cannot eat them if I do not wish to raise my constitution. Back to raw mushies. Sure, chicken meat was implemented, but it's four times worse than chanterelles in its FEP to food ratio.

Despite all of this, I've still managed to raise my dexterity higher than anyone else I know of. Maybe more than anyone else in the game, at this point.


Problem: Anyway, the point of all of that was to explain that pirozhkis are useless to me, because they give constitution FEP. And to present the problem that only loonies like me are capable of gaining decent amounts of DEX without raising their constitution. Now, a lot of people don't want to raise their constitution at most times. Since a ton of common foods already give CON FEP, including bread, an important newbie food.


Solution: Remove constitution FEP from pirozhkis and bread. This would allow people to raise their dexterity at a almost reasonable rate in comparison to other stats. And the bread part would allow people to eat something filling (which is important in this large world of endless fir trees), without raising their constitution to highly undesirable levels.


Further balance thoughts: If you think this would make dexterity too easy to raise, lower the dex FEP gain from pirozhkis. Just please don't give them con FEP, we have enough con foods. If you think we wouldn't have enough con foods with the removal of bread and pirozhkis, increase cow chorizo/apple pie FEP gain.

[Peter]

I agree with this... though note that the bagels use formerly worthless poppies and give Psi AND Dex.

But for both of your points, yes PLEASE. Especially bread- I never make it, because I only rarely feel like improving my constitution. I also am trying to keep my stats ballanced, and all I'm getting for it is stalled at 21 for most of them. But I'd love to have something to eat without runing my last couple weeks of eating only chantarells.

Now, what I think is that it's obvious that single-FEP foods are far more valuable than multi-FEP foods, but all the high-class foods are multi-fep! That's why all the low-quality foods like fish and meat should have several 1-point boosts, while the most expensive foods should have only one but have a lot of points in it.

Or just get rid of FEPs entirely and get a system that allows for actual customization. I for one support having permanent stats set at creation. Maybe allow some growth, but you'd usually stay the same archetype with the same character.

[Potjeh]

Bagels are Psy and Agi, actually, and they're more Agi than Psy. So, if you don't have a nearby cave, you're shit out of luck.

[Hamel]

I agree with this... though note that the bagels use formerly worthless poppies and give Psi AND Dex.

I have been told by reliable sources that they give agility and psyche.

Oh, wait, Potjeh just said that while I was typing. Nevermind. :P

Or just get rid of FEPs entirely and get a system that allows for actual customization.

That would be nice, but I suspect that would take them forever to implement. This is more like a quick fix for some particularly unbalanced parts of the current system.

[sabinati]

I respectfully disagree with this. bread is the easiest food to make and if you remove the FEP from it you are really hurting new players. and why would you want a food as filling as bread that gave no FEP? as for the pirozhkis, yes, it does kind of suck that you have a chance to get con from them, you can just eat a 2/3 of your bar worth and then fill the bar with chantrelles and you only have a 1/3 chance to get con. i'm sure if you are patient they will introduce more foods that give dex and psy. chicken sausages? more cheeses? stews or soups? who knows?

[Amikron]

This is my first post in the forums since starting the game, and I've been glancing around the forums quite a bit before posting this, but I think the game could really do well by doing away with the one FEP bar. Instead having a bar for each stat (hidden or otherwise) it would allow you to concentrate more on staying alive, rather than worrying you're going to have to grind out 20000 Bear Bangers later because you ate too many fish, etc and so forth. Obviously by doing it this way, FEPs from food could be toned down a bit, and possibly make high quality and rarer foods worth a bit more on the trading market as you're not being punished if you have to run out and go fishing in the middle of a hunt just to survive long enough to kill a boar or what have you.

I know the FEP bar is part of the "challenge" of the game, but I think making the bars individual for each stat would be a nice way of taking some of the "pressure" off raising stats, especially when starting out.

[Hamel]

I respectfully disagree with this. bread is the easiest food to make and if you remove the FEP from it you are really hurting new players. and why would you want a food as filling as bread that gave no FEP? as for the pirozhkis, yes, it does kind of suck that you have a chance to get con from them, you can just eat a 2/3 of your bar worth and then fill the bar with chanterelles and you only have a 1/3 chance to get con. i'm sure if you are patient they will introduce more foods that give dex and psy. chicken sausages? more cheeses? stews or soups? who knows?

Because, with the exception of wild plant spawns, there is absolutely nothing to eat in coniferous forests beside animals and chanterelles. If you were raising a stat that you cannot raise with meat or chanterelles, attempting to travel through a large expanse of such a forest would result in HHP loss, a undesirable stat increases, or starving to death (the last would be much more likely for a newbie that could not kill animals or find chanterelles). I am told that bread of quality lower than 10 is a desirable commodity.

Bread would be like apples, except it uses up less inventory space for the amount of food it provides, and there is less annoying clicking to obtain it. I should mention that new players are always overshooting their constitution or intelligence because of the FEP provided by common newbie food.

A 1/3 chance of getting constitution is still too much for me. I need 20 more dexterity until I catch up to my other stats, and that's quite a bit of unneeded constitution, which would make it even harder for me to raise dex and psy. Different foods would be nice, but then Jorb would have to draw something other than boats. ;D

[Peter]

I respectfully disagree with this. bread is the easiest food to make and if you remove the FEP from it you are really hurting new players. and why would you want a food as filling as bread that gave no FEP?...

Because it would be as filling as bread without giving any FEPs. Useful for when you don't have any chantarells but want to plow a field without starving to death or loosing all the Dex feps you have.

Roast cow meat or apple pies are still present, as is boar meat for those not near grasslands.

[sabinati]

i need 60 more dex before i catch up...

[Axehilt]

I still keep thinking FEP as a system needs reworking, but here would be my stab at making the existing system work:

1. An easily-acquired food exists for every stat.
2. Harder-to-acquire food exists for each stat too, and provide substantially more FEP. (making them almost necessary to improve your stats after a certain point; and certainly more time-efficient.)
3. Quality Level affects FEP.
4. Hybrid foods (those which increase multiple stats) provide substantially more overall FEP than similarly difficult-to-acquire foods.
5. Foods are split amongst the activities of the game (sort of like they are now.)
6. High levels of skill in a certain area (foraging, hunting, fishing, farming, cooking) result in superior food. (an example first step would be to have fishing be a skill which affects the quality of fish caught -- and just like this food suggestion: the base QL is set by the "source" (the area you fish in) and it's multiplied by your skill level.)

With these foods in place the system becomes simpler for people:

• There's an easy to find food for newbies to find to increase the stat they want.
• As character stats improve, lowbie food becomes ridiculously slow to level stats with, so characters turn towards the higher tier foods.
• Hybrid foods yield a superior rate of stat increases (due to the sheer amount of FEP) but significantly less control over which stat goes up.
• Characters may choose to specialize towards one type of food (thus having a marketable commodity for anyone persuing the associated stat)